animus
by Diacritical
Summary: The sun sets on their journey through Altera. Somehow, this isn't as happy as Rena would've liked their victory to be. They'd won with minimal loss of life, hadn't they? And they even had new companions to show for it. belated work for EVEmber.


the characters' classes don't matter for this, but if one must insist on it then in this particular timeline, Els is a Sword Knight, Aisha a Dark Mage, Rena a Sniping Ranger, Raven a Sword Taker, and Eve well on her way to exploring either the Exotic or Electra Code.

my timeline is one where the second job changes take place in Feita and Velder, not Altera. it made more sense that way, linear game be damned. one particular set of Rena's lines is quoted verbatim from the game, indeed, the very reason this fic was written.

happy belated birthday, Little Queen of Nasods.

look closely, squint, and tilt your head sideways, and you might see the author's preferred ship(s).

crossposted from ao3.

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><p>The second stray they've picked up brings with it a marked change in the atmosphere surrounding the group despite Elsword's repeated attempts otherwise. They are all stiff blades and pine needles now, dried out leaves threatening to crack and crumble at any wrong step or gust of wind. It was different with their first, Rena muses; the same sense of tension and uneasiness had been present with that one too, but much of that stemmed from their trying to convince him he had a place in their little flock. It was terribly difficult to be hard on the poor bird, after all, when he himself did it all for them.<p>

Ah, children. They are ever so young. The form she'd taken upon this plane, fleeting as its existence would be should the power of the El crystals truly be lost, would still be longer-lived than those she was traveling with.

Save one, perhaps, and like that her thoughts turn vaguely toward their newest stray again.

Rena didn't know all that much about Nasods, truly, only from the hushed whisperings and hisses of the elven elders about the First Disaster when she'd been younger. "And good riddance," they'd said in tones as harsh as the winter breeze blowing through abandoned homes and empty chasms, "Those accursed beings nearly brought ruin to us all. Humans should never have thought themselves so proud." Rena had only been a precocious child then, though these large events predated her still, but she found it strange that their elders, who preached compassion and love for nature and all the beings which lived within it, would so harshly condemn what she'd thought to be another race. She had been quickly yet gently corrected, their visages smoothing into kindly smiles as they'd told her, "Ah, child, one day you will understand. We elves revere life above all, and every being that the El has granted that gift to.

"It is not anyone's place to falsify that gift," they'd told her, and Rena had taken this in with wide eyes, her drooping ears tangling with the short green strands of hair that had barely reached her shoulders at the time.

If its claims were true, then their newest stray was older than Rena herself was. The glory days of the Nasod race had been long, long before Rena was born, and as their queen surely EVE would have reigned over them at a time when they were at their best. They would not have needed any ruler after the war, after all.

EVE is awkward around them, stilted in communication. Like a bird that had been pushed out of its nest too young, Rena decides, as no other comparison she can think of describes the strange sort of childish unfamiliarity that clings to the Nasod's interactions with them. EVE is approaching humanity, but not quite there, too formal, too poised, too stiff, despite their attempts at including her, making the Nasod feel like one of them. Unna- Mechanical, Rena almost thinks.

If this is what the elders had meant, Rena thinks she might understand their reasoning now. They had done their best to accept the Nasod Queen at Elsword's request, despite her origins. There were some hitches, of course—their first stray is nearly as stiff and forced as the Nasod Queen herself when they had to interact, and he volunteers for night watch every night he can now, spends more time sharpening his blade and fighting with shadows in his spare time, and Aisha is practically overbearing in her mage's curiosity—but, well, that should only take time, and some effort from all involved. Really, they had done their best.

But the tension that hangs over them like a dark thunderhead does not dispel, even as they approach the Ponggos' underground town again. They make camp in the sprawling plains where they'd first noticed the signs of the Alterasia plant. Raven is on night watch, Elsword snoring a few feet away with their swords nearby. Aisha had been asking EVE all manner of things last Rena checked, and Rena…

Rena is sitting on one of the plains' many raised platforms, staring up at the stars.

"We've won a war," she sighs. "Saved a village, recovered Ruben's El. Honestly, this gloom is ridiculous. We should be celebrating. If you were alive, you'd think so too, wouldn't you?"

Neither the wilted grass nor the broken down machinery below her answer, of course. The archer settles back again, folding her legs beneath her. "Old Nasods, decommissioned flying ships—all rotten and discarded," she mutters, suddenly missing the vibrant forests of the mainland. "Why do I feel mournful? It's not as if anything with a soul was buried here."

The field is silent, but something in the wind feels almost reproachful and impossibly lonely. Rena hums, green eyes flickering shut. "Or—is it possible that Nasods might have some semblance of a soul?"

"Eve would not know," comes the clipped answer from behind her. Rena turns her head and finds the Nasod Queen there, arms crossed and feet hovering gently above the ground.

The elf smiles welcomingly, glad for the company. "Do you not understand what one is?"

EVE's eyes grow sharper, if possible. "Do not be ridiculous. Of course Eve does. Eve knows of all the definitions for the hypothetical construct that other races define as the 'soul.'"

"It isn't hypothetical," Rena rebukes mildly. "But if that's so, then why wouldn't you know? Shouldn't the Nasod Queen know everything about her people?"

"Negative," EVE snaps, a chill wind in her voice. "Eve is no dictator. If it is not for the sake of the Nasod race as a whole, then there is no reason to abridge her people's rights so. Each of us has their own will. We are… were not a hivemind.

"In any case," the Nasod continues, boots clacking loudly against the metal platform as she settles onto it, "the concept of a soul is too loosely defined. It cannot be quantified in any meaningful way. Thus whether Nasods do or do not have souls is inconsequential. Regardless of what your views on it are."

Rena tilts her head not unlike an owl. "That's… terribly sad."

"What is?"

"That you'd disregard the importance of a soul that way." But perhaps it cemented what the elders had been trying to say, so long ago. The elf shakes her head, hair swaying like willows with the movement. "Souls are precious. They are what give each living being individuality and meaning. They're a gift that each of us struggling on in this world has received, a mortality and uniqueness inherent to that one being."

"Enough," EVE says. The Nasod's expression is blank most of the time, but this is the first Rena's seen such a deliberately emotionless mask on the construct, and not for the first time she notes the Queen's impossible stillness, the construct's lack of breath. "There is no need to condescend to me. And I will not stand idly by and be insulted." The little Queen of Nasods does not appear so little now as she lifts herself into the air again, floating heedless of gravity in the sky in front of Rena. "Do you think that Eve has not heard similar sentiments before? That because we were originally a created race that you are somehow superior to us?"

"Of course not," Rena says. "I'm sorry if it came off that way."

The Nasod makes a clicking sort of noise before turning around and staring down at the ruined plains below them. After a while, abruptly: "Tell me, do you believe Eve to have her own will?"

Rena thinks about it for a moment; the Nasods they'd been fighting before had been all under the control of the Nasod King, but then again the King was destroyed (they'd made sure of it) and here Eve is in front of her acting on her own and asking this. "Yes."

"Acknowledged. Do you believe Eve to be an individual existence?"

This one takes a bit longer. "If you can be replicated by anyone who has your designs, then, well…" Rena starts, slowly, thinking back to the foundry and the presses found there.

EVE looks back over her shoulder then, expression unreadable and pupilless golden eyes glowing softly in the evening light. "So mortal identical twins do not have individual existences."

"Of course they do. Even if they are the same, their experiences are not, and they develop…" The elf trails off, her eyes growing bright at the same time that EVE cuts her off.

"Then being an individual is not based on whether someone else shares the same 'design blueprints,' if you will. This goes hand in hand with being 'unique.'" EVE turns fully now, and closes her eyes. "Certainly, you can have no doubt that we Nasods are mortal, with how many of us you have destroyed in your quest to destroy Altera's Core.

"As for meaning," she says softly, "Meaning is only what you assign to things, isn't it? That, too, cannot be objectively quantified. This plain here, in front of us. The broken objects scattered across it. You do not think it is something worth grieving over." Her eyes are open again now, and their piercing glow is sharp. "Eve cannot tell you whether or not Nasods have souls. But we have our own wills, our own desires, our own individual existences. Our continued functioning is dependent on the same source of energy as you… and we mourn our lost."

She steps abruptly away again, standing farther from the platform and looking down somewhere into the distance. Rena gets to her feet. "Eve—"

"Leave me. I have heard enough of what you have to say. Eve tires of enduring the treatment she does."

"Mm, well," Rena goes on, an unsure smile crossing her visage.

"That was not a request."

The archer pushes forward anyway, attempting to be reassuring but wishing there were a better way to word this. "You know, if you want the others to be more relaxed around you, maybe you should try to act a little more… like you have just now. It'd remind them—well. They wouldn't treat you like the way they do if you were more, ah, human most of the time."

It clearly isn't the right thing to say, as Eve stiffens and her bright gold eyes narrow into a strikingly human glare as she whirls strongly enough for her capelet to flutter in the stagnant, still air. "Why, exactly," she asks, "is it Eve who should change herself, when it is her people that are all dead and yours that are responsible for it? Yours who would _rejoice_ over it?"

Rena smells ozone, the kind reminiscent of Aisha's lightning spells, and she knows the sparks flickering around the Queen aren't just imagined. But as quickly as it comes, Eve's anger passes, the Nasod seeming to sag in the air. "Begone," Eve says quietly. "Eve tires of having you within her sight. Leave her to her mourning. Know that if you speak of this to the others, Eve's mercy will not last."

She talks quite fiercely and has all the haughty imperiousness of a monarch, or at least what Rena imagines monarchs to be like, but Rena thinks that the Nasod Queen paints a very lonely portrait in the skies above the Return Plains.

The archer stays up on the platform for another good while before slipping away to rejoin the rest of the party.


End file.
